Emily Albrecht (she/they)

Emily Albrecht (she/they) is a lesbian artist and communications professional based in Minneapolis, MN. She enjoys storytelling and exploring themes of nature, family, and life cycles through a variety of mediums including both writing and visual art, the latter of which is featured in this year’s festival.

Steph Anglin (they/them)

Steph is a white, settler, able-bodied, queer, nonbinary, poly person who uses they/them pronouns. They were raised by a single mom and a small mountain town community on the stolen lands of the Ute peoples. They find joy in connecting with community, discussing intersectional -isms and how to resist them, dancing, smelling rain, watching snow fall slowly underneath street lamps, tasting the first sip of morning coffee, wearing their favorite button-downs, learning about nature's revolutionary acts, drawing to their favorite playlist, telling dad jokes, and basking in golden light.

Rosa Bandeirinha (indifferent)

Rosa (pronoun indifferent) is a nonprofit professional and artist, who earned a masters degree in architecture from the University of Coimbra in their native country Portugal. Rosa's work is driven by the exploration of emotional landscapes with curiosity, imagination and community.

Rosa is also a member of QSAF organizing team for the second consecutive time this year.

Max Barnewitz (they/them)

Max Barnewitz (they/them) is a cartoonist and mixed-media zinester. They earned their M.A. in Comparative Literary & Cultural Studies from the University of Utah in 2016 where they studied the ways comics portray queer identities. Max is currently pursuing and M.F.A. in Comics at the California College of the Arts. Max is passionate about arts access, sustainability, and community building. They take an eclectic and irreverent approach to art making, and their scavenger/multimedia arts practice engages questions surrounding identity and the natural world.

Cydney Caradonna (she/her/ella)

Cydney Caradonna (she/her/ella) is a Queer Latinx scholar and poet from California’s Bay Area. She currently resides in Salt Lake City while pursuing a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah. Caradonna has served as an educator in her previous roles as a high school Spanish teacher and practitioner on university campuses supporting leadership and social justice programs. Cydney has written and performed poetry since her early youth, with much of her writing reflecting her lived experiences with Queerness, socio-political quandaries, and searches for truth in light of epistemic oppression. Caradonna’s research centers the problematization of higher education serving as an epistemic mode of oppression, but also radical possibility. The ethos of her work is rooted in Black, Indigenous, Queer Feminist and Abolitionist epistemologies. She works as a Doctoral Research Assistant for the University of Utah’s Research Collaborative on Higher Education in Prison.

Clayton Conley (he/him)

Clayton grew up in Provo, Utah as a closeted gay Mormon. Much of his poetry explores the tension of his religious upbringing and his need for authentic queer expression through appropriating the language of Mormonism to express those queer ideas.

Ava Crane (she/they)

Ava E. Crane is a passionate and talented student who enjoys exploring different mediums to tell compelling stories. Thoughtfulness and critical thinking are of utmost importance to Ava, as she creates work whether it is a film, essay, or visual art. Ava is majoring in Film and Media Arts at the University of Utah.

Cael Crosby (he/him)

Cael Crosby is an award-winning queer poet from the Salt Lake Valley who enjoys reading, poetry open mics, and the LGBTQ+ community that thrives here despite religious prejudice!

Nick M. Daniels (they/them)

Considered to be a Pittsburgh pioneer in exploring race and sexual identity, Nick M. Daniels is the founding Artistic Director of the D.A.N.A. Movement Ensemble (Dancers Against Normal Actions) which he started in 1991 after attaining his BFA in Dance from Slippery Rock University. He reemerged after a 20+year hiatus. Since returning in 2016. His choreographic style is inspired by African, modern global movement and contemporary styles based on pure raw emotion. His creativity often entices the use of self realized soundscapes and video imagery.

Annalyse Davis (she/her)

Annalyse is a queer writer and editor from Southern Utah. Since childhood, she’s found joy in the process of bringing a character to life. With an iced beverage in hand, despite the temperature outside, she is often spotted while writing at her favorite local coffee shop. Annalyse also enjoys watching live theater, spending time with her loved ones, and art in all forms; however, she believes Van Gogh was correct in saying there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Olivia Dawson (indifferent)

Originally from New Mexico, Olivia Dawson is currently based in Salt Lake City, working as a Ceramic Studio Technician. In 2019, Dawson graduated from Westminster College with a B.A. degree in Art and has since shown work at a variety of institutions throughout Salt Lake City, including Urban Arts Gallery, Salt Lake Community College, Under the Umbrella Bookstore and Westminster College.

Elliott Donaldson (they/them)

Elliott Donaldson has been reading for a long time and started writing to increase the amount of time they could spend hanging out with words. They find joy in their work as a mental health therapist for queer adolescents and adults. In their free time (when not reading or writing) they enjoy weight training, going on walks, making collages, and cuddling with their cats. They run a queer horror book club (Scream Queers) at Under the Umbrella bookstore.

Adrian Fox-Staley (they/them)

Adrian (they/them) is a soft-spoken, queer rabble-rouser born and raised on occupied Ute, Shoshone, and Goshute lands (SLC, UT). As an artist, they work primarily with zines, digital art, poetry, and textiles, although they have also participated in movement-based work with loveDANCEmore. They believe in art as a tool to metabolize emotion, and are curious about the ways pleasure and grief can lead to liberation.

Andrea G. Hardeman, M.S. (she/her)

Andrea G. Hardeman, M.S. is an expressive abstract artist, poet, and bestselling author. Creating a space that allows others to feel seen and see themselves more clearly is at the core of her every endeavor. Andrea began writing poetry as a form of healing and emotional processing in 1998. Creative expression through poetry and painting is how she excavates her deepest joy, pain, hopes, and fears. She established her brand Papillon Skies in 2020. She has been featured in the 2023 NBA All-Star Players’ Lounge, SLUG Magazine, the Adobe Blog, Voyage Utah!, and The Black Angle. Andrea’s work is currently on display in the France Davis Utah Black Archive, at Urban Arts Gallery, and at 9th and 9th Book and Music Gallery. She has authored two collections of poetry, love the journey: POETRY AND ARTWORK SELECTIONS and Queer, in addition to a guided affirmation journal titled Getting Grounded.

Sophia Heiner & Tori Meyer

Sophia Heiner is an interdisciplinary creative based in Salt Lake City. She derives interest from physical, natural, and social sciences and is specifically curious about how these fields intersect with imagination and abstraction. She received a BFA in Dance and a BA in Business from Marymount Manhattan College and she is currently a student at the University of Utah working towards a BS in Nursing.

Tori Meyer is a performer, choreographer, and dance educator based in Salt Lake City. Creating dance, music, and films, she is interested in abstract queerness, amateurism, and silliness in art. Her choreography draws heavily from the collaboration of friendship. She received a BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah.

Hannah Huang (they/she)

Hannah (left) grew up in Northern California before moving to Utah for school and is currently freelancing in Salt Lake City. They enjoy naps in the sun and spending time with the people they love. Hannah's work explores platonic queer joy through playful movement that encourages audience members to remember their own joyful experiences. “Shedding” initially started as a duet with Annastasia Beller but, due to an injury, morphed into a solo.

Keziah Kenning (she/he/they)

Keziah is a 27-year-old queer person, artist and full time teacher. They have a desire to cultivate a world for young people that they wish they could've had when they were a kid. She’s blessed to be able to do this both in her career and in her art - the ladder of which has helped her work through so many rough spots in her own life for as long as she can remember. Keziah’s art has been his biggest source of confidence even when he was struggling to find himself. He has found himself now. And they love creating art for those who need to feel inspired and uplifted, and simply for the fun of it.

Cyan Larson

Cyan is an interdisciplinary artist based in Salt Lake City who uses their emotional, (meta)physical experiences in life as medium and driver for their art practice. Through their queer and mentally ill lenses, they manifest representations of how they experience the world in their art. Their art has been featured in the 2022 Utah State Wide Annual show, and the Internal Structures group show at the Alvin Gittins Gallery in 2022.

Rae Luebbert (she/they), Emma Sargent (she/her), and Meagan Bertelsen

Rae Luebbert (she/they) is a movement artist, dance educator, arts administrator, and community organizer. Based in Salt Lake, they work as an Academic Advisor in the College of Fine Arts at the U, dance teacher at South Valley Creative Dance, and as an independent choreographer. Rae is the producer and co-curator of the annual Noori Screendance Festival, the facilitator of Monday Movement Lab which is a creative incubator space, and a 2022-2024 loveDANCEmore Artist in Residence.

Emma Sargent (she/her) is a dance artist and performer based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Emma has performed with several project-based companies in Salt Lake City, including SONDERimmersive, Deseret Experimental Opera Company, and Cat + Fish Dances. Emma enjoys collaborative creative processes drawing from improvisation and diverse performing arts techniques. She values artmaking as a community building practice and aims to democratize dance through arts organization and performance.

Meagan Bertelsen is a queer dancemaker and floral artist in SLC, cultivating a special interest in both mediums for site-specific work, installations, and audience connection. For her, both floral and dance allow the viewer to be transported through their senses to a heightened, alive, present moment. Meagan often works across disciplines with other artists, and has performed, choreographed, and produced multimedia works for Deseret Experimental Opera Company over several seasons.

Amanda Madden (they/them)

Amanda Madden is a filmmaker, facilitator, and space holder whose work experiments with queer evolutions of intimacy, identity, landscape, and connection. They seek to create films and experiences that queer both the process and the content and are rooted in their belief that film is a portal for breaking binaries, embodied experience, and a way to see and be seen. Their work has won multiple awards and has been exhibited internationally. They hold an MFA in Nonfiction Media from Hunter College and have taught filmmaking at youth media organizations and CUNY Hunter College. They recently launched a new project, Reflection Collective, which is a series of virtual DIY and experimental filmmaking workshops that focus on exploration, introspection, and connection. They are also a co-facilitator of iowahouseSLC, a queer/trans community-building project in Salt Lake City.

Christina Mellor (she/they)

Christina (she/they) is a nonbinary and queer photographer whose work has central themes of self-love and LGBTQIA+ liberation. They believe that storytelling plays a large role in building stronger communities and a brighter future by empowering each individual toward liberation through self-compassion. Their colorful, creative, and expressive art is backed by the belief that we all deserve to see ourselves through kinder eyes.

Nelson Morales (muxe/he/him)

Nelson Morales (he/him)

Since 2008 Nelson has dedicated himself completely to photography independently and has studied various educational programs of contemporary photography in Mexico. His work focuses mainly on issues of gender, body, identity and sexual diversity. He has made various collective in 18 countries and he has obtained different mentions and recognitions around the world. His work has been published in Aperture, New York times, Vogue Italia, Vogue México, Vice, mexicanísimo, TETU, Loeil de la photograpie, The British Journal of photography, Der Greif and many more. In 2018 he published his first Photobook, “Musas Muxe” and in 2019 he published his second Photobook “Fantastic Woman”. His work belongs to different collections, both public and private.

Nataly (they/them)

Nataly is a queer, Filipino-American artist based in Salt Lake City. Creating representational art and working primarily with oils, Nataly's work encompasses a wide range of subjects linked to lived experiences as a queer person of color.

ROBERTA

‘Roberta’ is a new SLC trio combining the unique blend of Ava Kostia’s charismatic vocals, Matthew Heckmann’s warm cello, and Amelia Diehl’s bright electric guitar. Their musical magnetism emerged after they met through This Whole Time, a summer 2022 project facilitating new collaborations between dancers and musicians. This experimental ethic and excitement to try uncommon and queer combinations continues to guide their explorations together, with influences as broad as indie folk, jazz, and ambient music. Listening to their music evokes a lamp’s soft glow, the intimate ooze of spring’s thaw, and the grit to weather another winter – light that is soft, and also doesn’t shy from showing the raw truth.

Masio Sangster (he/him)

Masio Sangster (he/him) likes making art and moving his body. Masio thinks in multidimensional ways and is constantly dancing. Loving and endless dancing. Masio is interested in how we connect dance to the spiritual and how we remind ourselves to be human within these honest processes.

Laura Skaggs (she/her)

Laura Skaggs is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in treating spiritual trauma at the intersection of LGBTQ+ experiences and religion. Laura earned her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy at San Diego State University with an emphasis in LGBTQ+ mental health within conservative religious social contexts. She went on to serve for two years on the board of directors of Affirmation: LGBT+ Mormons, Families, and Friends with a focus on responding to spiritual trauma and suicide prevention. Laura is also the co-creator of CWEERS Empowerment groups: a practice designed to help LGBTQ+ individuals and their supporters confront social discrimination and internalized stigma. Laura is the mother of two daughters and presently sees clients full time in Provo, UT, as part of Flourish Therapy.

Mors Smith (they/he)

[BIO]

Jade Swayne (they/them)

Jade Swayne (they/them) is a queer trans non-binary black artist who claims a passion for life and living it. While socio-systemic, personal, and inter-generational factors have deeply impacted their ability to fully express said passion they take seriously their role as an advocate for mental health and creative healing and creator of ever-emergent, equitable realities for all. Jade is especially committed to discovering, experiencing, and sharing the precepts of truest freedom inspired by the wisdom of the late musical genius and activist Bob Marley, ‘emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds’. Whether it’s activism, community holding, public speaking, poetry, creative nonfiction, or performance, personal liberation as a primary means of collective liberation is centered. They have spoken publicly about their experiences and teach on topics of spirituality, meditation and mindfulness for a decade. They perform their poetry and storytelling at multiple venues in Salt Lake City including [storytelling night you used to do], Queer Poetry Night at Laziz, Poetry 365 at The Clubhouse, and Voices Heard at The Sugar Space. They were a featured poet at the Alone Together poetry event at Under The Umbrella bookstore last June, and won third place for the Summer of Color 2022 Juneteenth event poetry contest. Their work has been published in multiple issues of the Mobile Moon Coop, the Panocha Zine and Our Trans Youth zines. They co-facilitate the queer/trans community project IowaHouseSLC with their partner, Amanda. They recently finished and released their first physical-copy poetry collection. And facilitate a writers workshop and host a poetry night at Curiosity SLC.

Teddy P (he/him)

As a recording artist known for using the saxophone with electronic effects, Teddy P is featured on multiple studio albums as a leader, sideman, and collaborator. Releases as a leader include Retrogression, Just Then, and Where the Cats Are, which feature Teddy Ps original modern jazz compositions and improvisations. Teddy P is also prominent as a composer and improviser on these collaborative studio recordings: Through the Nebula, Time Cube, The Joy of Christmas, Ultramarine, and Echoes. Teddy P performs regularly in and around his home base of Salt Lake City, Utah at venues such as the University of Utah Libby Gardner Concert Hall, the University of Utah Fine Arts West Building, the Salt Palace Convention Center, The Depot, Platinum Music and Sports Collectibles, and The Grand America.

Frank Vales (he/him)

Frank Vales (he/him) is a 19-year-old disabled, neurodivergent, Gender-Queer, and gay artist living in Sugarhouse, Utah. He is studying writing and communication, and in his free time, he dabbles in many different art mediums (including poetry, visual art, film, and more). His art is inspired by his unique relationship to his religion and heritage. His Queer identity influences all the art that he makes and he is passionate about building and supporting his local Queer community through creativity.

Cam Welch (they/he) and Milo P. Ono (they/them)

Cam Welch (they/he) is a recent graduate from Westminster College (BFA, MAT) who teaches dance in the Salt Lake City area. They are passionate about the connections between mental health, mixed abilities, and movement, using dance as a mode for healing. As a SLC local, they are grateful for the dance and queer communities that they are able to participate in and contribute to through their art and education. You can find them performing with Interdisciplinary Arts Collective, Beyond the Line Theatre Company, and Westminster College Dance Company as an alum.

Milo P. Ono (they/them) is a queer creative and aspiring librarian "from" Salt Lake City. In 2022, they graduated from Oberlin College with a major in Creative Writing and minors in Book Studies and Dance. During college, they performed with the Oberlin Dance Company, directed Ballet Oberlin, and explored the intersections of somatics, music, and poetry. They are currently pursuing their dream of spending as much time in a library as possible.

Lewis Figun Westbrook (he/they)

Lewis Figun Westbrook (he/they) is a queer writer of too many genres and artist of too many things. Lewis grew up in New Jersey where the trees are thick enough to inspire fantasies of magic and a suspicion of secrets in the most mundane places. They now live in Utah with their partners and found family. There, the buildings are short enough to remind you that an adventure is always closer than you expect. He is currently published in Love Gone Wrong, a horror anthology, and The Paper Crow, an online literary journal. Find them on most social media @lewisrllw or look for them in local queer shops (bonus points if they have books or art!)

Andrea C. Whipple (she/they)

Andrea is a queer student at the U of U, studying film with an emphasis in animation.

Meg Wilson (they/them)

Meg Wilson (they/them) is a BFA Printmaker at USU, student Labor and tenant rights organizer, and LGBTQIA+ advocate, activist, and accomplice. Come see their art this weekend at Queer Spectra Arts Festival!

Nathaniel Woolley and Dani Mendez & Hunter Hazard

Dani and Nathaniel are local artists who often find themselves collaborating. Nathaniel is a dancer, choreographer, singer, costume designer, actor, and film artist. Dani is a body piercer, visual artist, flautist, dancer, and jeweler.

Hunter Hazard is a project based music and dance artist currently residing in Draper, Utah. After graduating with a BFA in modern dance from the University of Utah in 2020, Hazard now focuses on community building through offering free movement workshops and orchestrating intimate performances.